Comment by Schiendelman
5 days ago
That's a big part of why zoning is so dangerous. In most of the western world (Europe too on average), we pushed down population density so much that your typical destinations are much less likely to be within walking distance, so you don't walk.
Indeed. In NYC I do 98% of my shopping by walking. I can reach my doctor by walking. My daughter used to walk to school because it was a 10 minutes walk (and an excellent school).
That would be impossible in a suburban setting; at best, one of these destinations would be within the theoretical waking distance, but without the walkways.
> That would be impossible in a suburban setting;
Not necessarily true. The "village center" idea Jim Rouse used in his design of Columbia, MD could be used to solve the problem.
All of these things are within walking distance if you live in Columbia's village of Wilde Lake (and, of course, your health insurance covers the primary care physicians in walking distance).
I'm guessing you're thinking of typical "stroad" suburbs, but alternatives are possible and do exist.
Unfortunately, the suburb has to be the product of planning like Columbia. Typical "emergent" suburbs turn into unwalkable ones.
The fact that alternative designs are possible is almost irrelevant, because the problem is that you don't get people to agree on the same things. You get one example of something like that and it never replicates.
If you want public health outcomes, actual scale, you get much better outcomes by not having that regulatory system at all.
Absolutely. There's a reason body fat percentage in New York City is so much lower than anywhere else in the US!
This is something I've visually observed all over Australia. The walkable areas are noticeably fitter. I don't think all of those people just happen to care about fitness more, they just spend more time moving to get between places rather than sitting all day.
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Really depends on the suburb. Where I live in NYS (a suburb of Buffalo) all of those things are within walking distance if you live within the village limits.
It's interesting - whether examples of potential destination categories are within walking distance doesn't move the needle on health (physical or mental) outcomes, compared to absolute residential density moving the needle tens of percent.
Yeah pretty much the only way to scale exercise to entire populations and over entire lifetimes is to design it directly into the cities.
The crazy part is you don't even have to DESIGN it, the market is desperate to build walkable density because it's so much more profitable than anything else. You just have to LET landowners build upward.
But then you'll run into traffic/parking issues unless you have a good public transit and land use policy (e.g. bikes, trams, mixed use development, etc). That requires such good design skills few cities have mastered it (Tokyo, Copenhagen, Singapore).
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